Outside broadcasting

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FOX 25 trucks in Boston's Harvard Square

A BBC Radio outside broadcasting van at New College, Oxford

Outside broadcasting is the production of television programmes (typically to cover news and sports events) from a mobile television studio. This mobile studio is known as an "Outside Broadcasting Van" or "OB Van". Signals from cameras and microphones come into the OB Van for processing and transmission.

Interior

A typical OB Van is usually divided into 5 parts.

The first and largest part is the production area where the director, technical director, assistant director, character generator operator (sometimes called a chyron operator) and producers usually sit in front a wall of monitors. This area is very similar to a Production control room. The technical director sits in front of the video switcher. The monitors show all the video feeds from various sources, including computer graphics, cameras, video tapes, or slow motion replay machines. The wall of monitors also contains a preview monitor showing what could be the next source on air (does not have to be depending on how the video switcher is set up) and a program monitor that shows the feed currently going to air or being recorded. The dirty feed (feed with graphics) is what is actually transmitted back to the central studio that is controlling the outside broadcast. A clean feed (without the graphics) could be being sent to other trucks for use in their production. The video switcher is usually operated by 1 person and that person is responsible for putting all the video sources to air as directed to.

The second part of a van is for the audio engineer; it has a sound mixer (being fed with all the various audio feeds: reporters. commentary, on-pitch microphones, etc. The audio engineer can control which channels are added to the output and will follow instructions from the director. The audio engineer normally also has a dirty feed monitor to help with the synchronization of sound and video.

The 3rd part of the van is video tape. The tape area has a collection of video tape machines (VTRs) and may also house additional power supplies or computer equipment.

The 4th part is the video control area where the cameras are controlled by 1 or 2 people to make sure that the iris is at the correct exposure and that all the cameras look the same.

The 5th part is transmition where the signal is monitored by and engineered for quality control purposes and is transmitted or sent to other trucks.

A Remote Unit being fabricated in Pittsburgh PA

Truck rental companies

National Mobile Television (based in the [United States])
[NEP Supershooters] (based in the [United States])
[Dome Productions] (based in [Toronto], [Canada])

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